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Greenlee: Transportation mission creep?

By Bob Greenlee

Posted:
02/17/2013 01:00:00 AM MST

I 'm not very sympathetic to all the eccentric decisions made by Boulder's elected policy wonks, but when it comes to discovering ways to maintain basic city services I'll make conditional exceptions. An example is City Council's current struggle in discovering how to maintain our city streets, highways, and infrastructure.

In 1967 voters approved a one-cent permanent sales tax increase, 40 percent of which would be used to acquire and maintain open space and the rest for "the acquisition of real property for streets and highways, the construction of same, together with all necessary improvements of existing streets and highways." Curiously, when voters approved the ordinance it didn't include funding to maintain those streets and highways and the city's beleaguered general fund was tapped for the job. With every new road or highway built the long-term cost of maintaining that infrastructure usually exceeded its initial cost.

Six years later it became obvious that things weren't working out. So in 1973 voters were asked to pass a new ordinance that would "expand the authority to (make) expenditures (by) city council in its discretion (for items) 'related to' transportation (and) 'transportation services'." Notice how significantly things changed. No longer would tax revenues be used for just streets and highways but a greatly expanded use for anything related to transportation meaning every conceivable thing Boulder's progressive social engineers could conceive under that umbrella were now possible.

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Civil engineers make things happen; social engineers coerce things to happen and has produced what we know today as "mulitmodalism." No longer would funds be used just to acquire property and build new streets and highways but multimodalists would spend lots of money on other stuff like bicycle paths, blinking yellow lights, public transit, and carbon reduction strategies. At the same time the city said it would no longer use general fund monies for street and highway maintenance so those costs would come from the newly defined transportation tax.

Today the city finds itself unable to do all the things it committed to. At the low end, transportation officials say they are short $2.5 million for maintenance on sidewalks and multi-use paths and $5.6 million short if they add in maintaining roadway surfaces. Inflation and increased costs of materials over the past decade is one reason for the deficit but perhaps the far greater problem is simply that the city has taken on more unrelated tasks than were ever contemplated nearly 40 years ago.

Currently the city has 675 miles of roadways, 474 miles of sidewalks, and 52 miles of multi-use pathways with 140,000 people making more than 600,000 daily "trips" utilizing that infrastructure. Maintaining the current roadway system eats up roughly two-thirds of the city's $25 million transportation budget. The next largest expenditure of $1.8 million embellishes bus service beyond what the Regional Transportation District provides and the city claims it needs an additional $500,000 for public transit.

Local citizens should prepare themselves for coughing up more money to keep the current system going or reduce its promises. And before coming up with a new tax, or fee, policy makers need to determine whether they should continue engaging in a variety of social engineering strategies primarily aimed at discouraging automobile use. As part of the city's enhanced "sustainability" protocol, automobiles are environmentally insensitive if not entirely evil. They pollute the air and cause climate change and encourage extracting fossil fuels employing hydraulic fracturing that causes earthquakes, nosebleeds, and expensive lawsuits. Even the city's Transportation Advisory Board says any new funds shouldn't be used to influence personal choices or individual behavior like shifting car users to bicycles or skateboards.

Stay tuned. There will be more to report as council begins its serious deliberations on this important issue.

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